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Tuesday, April 19, 2011

NYC Educator: Don't Hurt Yourself Trying to Do Us Any Favors

NYC Educator: Don't Hurt Yourself Trying to Do Us Any Favors

Don't Hurt Yourself Trying to Do Us Any Favors

Well, happy spring break, y'all. I'm coming to you live from one of the five boroughs, where I'm staycationing for this particular break. It works for me, though. After all, if I'd gone somewhere, I might have missed Chancellor Walcott's heartwarming speeches from the weekend, in which he promised not to do any teacher-trash-talking.However, in pretty much the same breath, he sounded the death knell on layoffs yet again.

I hate to be a Debbie Downer here. It is, after all, nice to have a Chancellor who does seem to have some foggy notion of what it's actually like to do our job. So I'll give him some props for that. But working very hard and doing all the right things at a job you're not sure if you'll have for much longer doesn't comfort the soul very much.

Let's not forget that the city experienced higher than expected tax revenues and, depending on who you ask, is sitting on a $3 billion budget surplus. This surplus is what made Gov. Cuomo skeptical at best about Mayor Bloomberg's insistence that the city needed from the state both more